Between march 2020 and march 2022, the Slovenian government was once again led by Janez Janša. During his third term as prime minister, the measures of the political authority, its behavior and actions towards and regarding journalists and the media were such that we can identify them as political pressure on journalism. In the thesis, we conduct a qualitative analysis research on the impact of such political interference in journalism on journalists’ self-perception and work. Through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 experienced Slovenian political journalists, we find that political pressure affects both journalists’ attitudes towards journalistic values and functions as well as their working process and reporting. Faced with political pressures, the interviewed journalists championed the established journalistic values of objectivity, impartiality, truth-seeking and public service even more than before. They acknowledged the importance of journalism as the fourth estate. To prevent or avoid the possibility of discreditations from politicians they applied special care and attention in confirming information and honing their reports. In some media, editors were far more involved in the redaction of stories than usual. Our research also revealed a change in power relations between journalists and politicians as their sources because of social media: the combination of politicians limiting their collaboration with journalists while instead posting their statements directly on Twitter resulted in journalists utilizing these statements in their articles. All of this affected the content of reporting – with implications for freedom of information, freedom of the press and for democracy.
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